


Bake off

by down



Category: Magic Knight Rayearth
Genre: Canon - Manga, F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 19:22:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10225319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/down/pseuds/down
Summary: Clef asked Umi to teach him how to bake. It doesn't go quite how she imagined.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Milieva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieva/gifts).



> Originally written for fan-flashworks - together challenge.
> 
> (Also as a belated valentine's day present for my wife!)

Umi was pretty certain this was not how the cute baking-together scenes went in the movies. It was meant to be smudging flour on each other’s noses, hands touching as they passed over a spoon, standing so close at the counter that you were pressed together. Paying attention to _each other_. With bonus cake at the end. 

Not someone stopping you every two seconds to make detailed and scientific notes on the whole baking process. 

“So, what was the nature of this ‘baking powder’?” Clef looked up from his notes – on the _other side of the table_ , and smiled at her. 

Umi grit her teeth. If she murdered him now, she might even get some cake by the end of the afternoon. (It would be good cake, too – dark chocolate, not too sweet, and she liked it as it came out of the oven but could serve it up to her friends with lots of frosting and strawberry jam.) (Not Clef, obviously, as if he was still alive to eat it, there would still be no cake.) Dragging the ingredients to Cephiro had been a pain, and two hours later she’d still not managed to get the dry ingredients in one bowl! 

…Okay, there had been a slight problem when she realised she had no scales, but it hadn’t taken that long to work out what Cephiro used for the job (which meant she was sliiiiightly guessing at quantities, here, but she’d made _so much cake_ since Hikaru worked out she was good at it that she almost didn’t need the scales at all anymore).

“If I have to explain leavening to you _one more time-_ “ she started, and stopped herself with a resigned sigh when Clef just grinned. 

It probably wasn’t his fault that when he’d asked about learning to bake, she’d thought he wanted a reason to spend time together… when he did, actually, want to learn to bake. As apparently Cephiro didn’t, really, which explained why the flatbread and the thin pastries were about the extent of the art here. 

“It’s just fascinating! Who ever would decide to experiment with letting something rot, and then cooking it?” 

“…I think they probably started making alcohol, and then baking stuff with alcohol. Don’t you ferment fruit to get all those drinks Caldina’s making her way through?” 

“I guess,” he shrugged one shoulder, fingers fiddling with his pen while it wasn’t on the paper. “As I haven’t been allowed near anything vaguely alcoholic since I got my magic, I wouldn’t really know. I never paid that much attention to it.” She blinked. “…Too high a chance of accidentally exploding myself or my surroundings. I was too young to drink before, so…” 

“…If we tell Caldina that, she’s going to declare your life a tragedy.” 

“Probably, but you notice she never actually gets that drunk?” He tapped the end of the pen against his lips now, absently – only it was the inked end, after all his twirling. He didn’t seem to notice, and the smudge of blue-black was fairly small, but…

Umi sighed, and gave up, folding her arms on the countertop. “You’re lucky I like you,” she told him, seriously. “And I think you’d probably explode with excitement if I told you about Penicillin.”

“Is that another food?” 

“…Not exactly. I’ll tell you about it next time I want to distract you for ten minutes so I can steal your work, you’ll have to wait. But _today_ , in _this cake here_ which we’re failing to make, we aren’t using any kind of yeast; baking powder sets off a chemical reaction. Totally different.” 

“But still makes the cake fluffy! I did always wonder how they do that in other places. But I always had more important things to do than find out.” He reached out, took her hand with his own, and raised it to his lips. “Thank you, for indulging my curiosity. And giving me enough information I can try experimenting here.” 

The kiss left transferred a tiny smudge of ink to her hand. Umi rolled her eyes at him, but her cheeks were heating up. “ _So_ lucky I like you,” she muttered, pulling her hand back. “…Wait, experimenting? Clef, what are you planning?” 

“I’m sure we can work out how you can do this with Cephiran foods, too. Without having to bring anything in from your Tokyo. Only I didn’t know enough about it to make a start, so…” 

Umi’s breath caught. Slowly, she sat down, staring across at him as he tapped the pen against the page and frowned at it again. 

“Though as our chemical descriptions bear no resemblance to yours and the translation spell is failing to compensate, the baking powder may take some working out…” 

“Clef…” her voice cracked in her suddenly-dry throat, and Umi swallowed. Clef blinked up at her. “Clef, are you – trying to work out how I can still bake when – if – when I _move-_ “ To Cephiro. Away from her family, and everything familiar, which they hadn’t explicitly spoken about – which was still years away, and that was a far longer game than the few hours together she’d been thinking of as his goal. To have her hobby still available, even here…

“…You always have talked about how you love doing this,” he said, softly, which was not a confession. It still sounded like one. 

The tub of baking powder went flying as Umi scrambled up and across the counter. Clef’s notebook crinkled beneath her knee, and she was probably getting inkstains on her jeans, but going around the table hadn’t registered as an option. Clef squeaked as she slammed into him, but his face turned up to hers even as it happened. 

Ten minutes later, Umi probably had as much ink on her lips as there was left on Clef’s, and he was probably going to complain about creases across his notebook as soon as he noticed. But there was a smudge of flour in his hair, and he’d managed to pull her hair out of its pony-tail at some point. “I reckon it’s going to take a few years to work out, of course,” he told her. “But I might be getting somewhere by the time you leave this University you’re going to. As long as you keep teaching me what I’m meant to be doing, everysooften, of course.” 

“Of course.” She shook her head at him, and grinned. “I’m still going to insist we bake at least _one thing_ today, though – if you need better notes on the end stages we’ll just have to redo it. Understood?”

He laughed, and helped her down, and this time when Umi tugged on his sleeve he came around the counter to stand with her. She made a space for his notebook among the ingredients, and he leant into her side as she mixed and stirred, and he wrote down more detail. 

The cake, in the end, was pretty much perfect.


End file.
